Hearing capabilities change from one person to the other, hence audio signals to which the users are able to listen, change from one person to the other, depending primarily on one's hearing capabilities. The term “hearing range” usually describes the range of frequencies that can be heard by humans, though it can also refer to the range of levels. The human range is commonly given as 20 to 20,000 Hz, but there is considerable variation between different individuals, especially at high frequencies, and a gradual decline with age is considered normal. Sensitivity also varies with frequency, as shown by equal-loudness contours. Individual hearing range varies according to the general condition of a human's ears. The range shrinks during life, usually beginning at around age of eight with the upper frequency limit being reduced. Women typically experience a lesser degree of hearing loss than men, with a later onset. Men have approximately 5 to 10 dB greater loss in the upper frequencies by the age of 40. On top of that, there may also be substantial differences between one's hearing capabilities in the left and right ears.
In view of the above it is clear that the listening experience of each user could be enhanced when audio signals to which he/she listens, fits that individual. Unfortunately, there are no solutions to this problem yet, so that the options available for the users who wish to improve their listening experience, are for example the following:
Retrieving information form professional audio review websites that offer insight and commentary on the quality of headphones that they can purchase;
Retrieving information from bulletin boards and other public forums that provide comments relating to the products' quality from actual customers of the products;
Looking up for retailers that carry the items the user is interested in and determine if it would be possible to try them out; and
Testing models owned by friends or colleagues.
Although these solutions may help a user in assessing possible headphones that would better suit his needs, this is not a solution to the problem of tailoring the headphones to each specific user based on his/her own hearing capabilities, and obviously not to scenarios where the user listens to audio signals played by a device that is not provided with the option of plugging headphones thereto.
The few proposals for personalized headphones known in the art are for example the following ones:
US 20140016795 discloses a personalized headphone comprising a first speaker and a second speaker; a cord, having a removable connector plug at a distal end adapted to maintain audio communication with the first speaker and/or the second speaker, wherein the cord comprises an audio device connector plug adapted to maintain electrical communication with a digital playback device, wherein the audio output of the speakers has a built-in preconfigured equalizer personalized to a user's age, audio file format, audio file data encoding rate and music genre.
US 20060050908 describes a system and method that determines parameters for rendering headphone audio information, based on a user's preferred acoustic rendering in a non-headphone environment. A user configures a loudspeaker-based system for a preferred ambiance. Microphones on a head-mounted device then detect the audio signals received by the user in this environment. These detected signals are compared to the audio information that is being provided by the user's audio system and the differences are used to characterize the user's particular environment. Based on this characterization, when the user uses a headphone device to listen to the audio information, a headphone driver modifies the audio information to produce audio signals at the speakers in the user's headphone to effectively reproduce the audio signals that would have been produced at the user's ears by the loudspeakers in the user's particular environment.
The Applicant's U.S. 62/032,572 filed on Aug. 3, 2014, discloses a method and a device for modifying audio signals in accordance with hearing capabilities of an individual who is listening to audio signals being played via a set of headphones. The method provided is based on information obtained from a hearing test which the individual had taken, and when a set of headphones is used by that individual while listening to audio signals, the signals are modified into a form that takes into account the individual's hearing capabilities.
Yet, none of the solutions described above, provides a solution to the problem of enhancing the individual's listening experience by modifying the audio signals in a way that takes into consideration his/her hearing capabilities, when the audio signals are played by a new/different device or even by a device that has no socket to connect a set of headphones that may comprise a circuitry adapted to perform such a modification of the signals being played.